No More Rand-As-Foil (plus Huemer’s “Why I Am Not an Objectivist”)

As mentioned on the episode, covering Rand had a purpose for me not only in investigating a realm of the philosophical universe but in dispelling conceptual personae that have haunted me since college.

There's always in philosophy the issue of motivation: why bother to make some particular point at all? If philosophy were all about discovery, then we we'd all just read it and think about it but would only bother to communicate it insofar as doing so would be useful for helping us to get clear about what we've discovered. That's a real and legitimate motivation--philosophy should be social in this way--but isn't enough to explain the vehemence of a lot of philosophical rhetoric. No, we feel the need to make some point time and again with accompanying fist-pounding because we feel that the culture (or some segment of it worth being concerned about) is getting it wrong! And given how non-philosophical the general populace is at any given historical time and place, there's always plenty to rail against, as Rand aptly demonstrated. Even if she wasn't really up on what real philosophers were doing, she was reacting, as are most of us, to real people she'd met or read editorials by or seen on TV.

The many moments of disgust we accumulate when an objectionable politician or preacher speaks, or we overhear an ignorant conversation, or read something stupid someone says on an Internet forum, coalesce over time into a noxious cloud that follows us around, irritating us into fits when a conversation we're involved in veers in a certain direction, or a new example of the offending source material presents itself, or when we're just plain in a bad mood and looking to let off some steam. Such has been my experience as an American since I started maybe 15 years ago actually following politics, and it explains why anti-conservative barbs are so ready-to-hand to me during the podcast. Though I of course also find liberal idiocies like overly protective school policies and Portlandia eco-nonsense amusing as well, I regard these as generally benign and often with legitimate principles behind them (even if foolishly realized), so my knee does not then jerk against them.

Because of my early experience with Rand and the pretension of current conservative politicians who claim to follow her, Rand has served as a touchstone for my scorn over these many episodes, sometimes in deserved contexts (as in our discussion of Wittgenstein's arguments that I think clearly refute her naive, Aristotelian position on definitions and constitute one of the only bona fide advances in philosophy in its history) and sometimes not (as when I believe I characterized her as buying into a Hobbesian view that everyone is selfish... I tried to clear this up in a recent blog post). Going through this exercise of re-reading her and engaging with the current world of self-proclaimed Objectivists (which I've decided only to refer as "Randians" in the future, as they don't have the monopoly or even the best formulation of a correspondence theory of truth... I need to look into this further, but Popper and Comte both seem to give better pictures of this view) has given me some insight that should prevent me from bringing her up in the future:

In short, her philosophy as she states it is idiosyncratic and most likely actually incoherent (though one can and many have subjected her to apologetics worthy of the Bible, so I trust that there are coherent ways of stating views resembling hers). It does not well serve like idealism or libertarianism or the Christian recourse to faith or any number of other positions as something stable to contrast your view with. The fact that her philosophy has too much in common with too many reasonable views (coupled with her insistence that her position is virtually unique in the history of philosophy) makes it unworkable to simply refer to her in contradistinction to any other position... one would have to go into a textual analysis as we did a bit on the episode to point out the points of comparison and contrast, and really, that's not worth anyone's time.

Also, she's widely misunderstood (if one can even talk of understanding or misunderstanding such a cypher), and so caricatured that referring to her in passing is likely not going to illuminate any subject at hand, unless you're specifically talking about the position of ethical egoism (which I think we got wrapped up enough in the textual analysis during the episode that I don't feel like we actually evaluated).

So, no more bringing up Ayn Rand as a foil, even if something jumps out of a text I'm reading as usefully contrasting with her. Doing so just contributes to her over-rated stature, which is really the issue here. As Dylan pointed out, her writing has much in common with many a bright student who's worth engaging in conversation, if not actually suffering to read. If she weren't shoved down our throats like so many irritating celebrities, we'd have no issue with her and hence no episode on her. I often think about the demonization that goes on in politics: I would have no problem with someone like G.W. Bush or Dick Cheney being a member of my community, or a friend of my dad's. I would in no way see a point of criticizing or even judging his intelligence or intentions or sensibility in such a case; it's only that I can't (or couldn't as of the last administration) avoid these guys in the media that makes them targets. (Of course, they, unlike Rand, had actual power over life and death, but I hope the comparison comes through nonetheless.)

Huemer also spends a lot of time on how one might argue for ethical egoism and how Rand fails to do so, so this might serve as a good supplement to our discussion on the episode in that respect. Those with Randian leanings should in particular read his section defending the use of hypothetical examples, which philosophers use all the time but which Rand dismissed as mere reality-avoiding fantasy. There's really nothing wrong with thinking about what Seth calls "limit cases" to get at what we mean by concepts, particularly if you have an Aristotelian view of concepts whereby each of them should give you a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for deciding for each new case (including weird, imagined ones) whether or not it should count as justice or knowledge or virtue or whatever you're pondering.

Comments

Nice. But just so the Rand episode doesn’t come off as a kind of one-time “fan service,” I wonder if there’s still a way to continue the discussion of certain elements of Objectivism, like egoism, which I find interesting if repulsive.

For example, maybe some time PEL can cover “St.” Max Stirner. That might mesh well with existing the Rand, Nietzsche, and Marx episodes.

I don’t know about value, unless satisfying morbid curiosity has a value. It just seems to me that Rand’s brand of egoism is the primary catalyst for all the vitriol thrown her way. (It’s the primary source of my revulsion, anyway.) But at the same time, others have discussed egoism prior to Rand. (In fact, I suspect the intellectual chain-of-causation w/r/t Rand’s egoism likely went Stirner>>Nietzsche>>Rand.)

My main attraction to philosophy is to its intellectual history. I think the PEL corpus — at its best — feels like a kind of jigsaw puzzle slowing connecting all the interlocking pieces of that history. In that sense, I find the potential for value in covering Stirner, regardless of what judgment I might render on his arguments.

What I find interesting about egoism (not hers specifically) is first of all the dismissal of impartiality: it seems absurd that I should as some interpretations of utilitarianism or Kantianism dictate neglect my own family in favor of strangers across the globe, or that if I do pay more attention to them, it’s just a matter of duty. Also, the problem of what motivates one to act ethically doesn’t come up, it seems, for egoism (at least I get the sense that it’s more easily dealt with). I’m intrigued by Nietzsche’s idea that morality is not “thou shalt” but “I will,” that moral rules may not be social things at all but are tools for individuals to thrive.

These are all ideas I dropped on the episode (the last was in a comment that I edited out), but none of them sparked any kind of sustained discussion, as folks found them rather beside the point in dealing with Rand’s words on the page.

It’s sensible to react with more vehemence to the idiocies that we listen to the media and daily life than to those of the Middle Ages. So if one hears the ideas of Ayn Rand inculcated every day as if they were a great contribution to the history of Western thought, one is actually doing a bit of community service insofar as one goes out of one’s way to criticize them.

In addition, idiocy is irritating. It’s a form of pollution, like smog or noise from trucks or bulldozers. One tries as far as possible to defend oneself from idiotic irritations.

There is no need to apologize for attacking pretentious stupidity masquerading as philosophy, especially if, as is the case here, that system is used to justify a very unjust distribution of the world’s resources and income.

Mark I relate to your your remarks regarding Rand as a haunting conceptual personae. In my early twenties I had several friends/colleagues who identified as Objectivists and can remember many long winded debates with them.
At the time I personally very much identified with some quasi-chomskian left anarchism so was troubled by how much I shared with Rand in terms of celebrating the individual, yet simply could not get on board with her larger metaphysical and epistemological–not to mention socioeconomic–vision. I was not equipped philosophically to break down her larger thinking so there was always some lingering attraction-repulsion for me. Perhaps it was just her tone…

What I thought was great about the episode was you guys essentially did a genealogy of her thinking–even if she herself appears at times unaware of her own sources. I appreciate you taking the time to do so.

And going forward I for one would very much like to hear you guys delve into anarcho-libertarianist thinkers…

There is something of a getting-the-bur-out-of-the-existential-shoe about your post. And I sympathise completely with a motivation like that. I won’t say Rand has been an unwelcome irritant in my own intellectual life. But ‘Randians’ are a different story all together. They always seem to find a way to pop up and annoy me.

But I know what confirmation bias is. I have read some of the research papers from neuroscience that shows how the brain is illogically logical under the effects of value judgements and affect. I should be gracious – but the things they say… Oh to shrug and walk away. Always a good choice when confronted with thoughtless passion.

Unfortunately Rand has influence. Adam Curtis in his wonderfully titled documentary series “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” made some fascinating connections between West Coast counter culture, laissez-faire capitalism, recent economic policy, utopian techno-anarchism, and Rand. It is a bit of a cut-and-paste thought poem, more ‘art’ than ‘argument’ – but insightful and fascinating nonetheless. Arguable in the details, Curtis’ examination at least makes it clear just how influential Rand’s ideas are even today – unfortunately.

I trust all engaged thinkers – including yourself – will continue to take such opportunities as arise to laugh when naked emperors wander the streets demanding our obligation.

I think too, there are some very interesting intersections between traditional philosophy, systems theory, anarchy and the more extreme individualistic approached to ethics. I do hope the PEL team decides to ‘go there’.

No. I did not know Larry Summers is to replace Bernanke. I guess it’s a “safe” appointment for Obama. He served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton and as Chief Economist for the World Bank.

The stimulus isn’t helping the economy it’s really just artificially making a bubble in the stock market and in commodities. Article above and
“Banks are under pressure to reduce risk on their balance sheet; as commodity prices rise again, they may face more allegations that they could use these assets to drive prices higher or lower, squeezing them for trading profits.”

The documentary is really interesting. But I took from it that the problem is not “individualism” i.e. personal liberties and freedoms nor is the problem free markets i.e. individuals trading value for value to mutual benefit and mutual consent.

No, the problem is a broke banking system.

I posted this video link before but it has a great summary of Hayek’s insight into the boom and bust cycle.

We think that FDIC insurance of our bank deposits is a good thing. And every country has some version of deposit insurance or why would you even put your money in a bank.

But then you combine that with a fractional-reserve banking system where the bankers can use other peoples money to make risky loans and bad investments.

It’s the tax payers that have to bail out the banks. Or go deeper into debt to get loans from other countries to bail out the banks.
Like in Cyprus, Greece, the U.S., etc.

I also thought it interesting how influential the “California ideology” has been on the “left”.

And how Alan Greenspan saw it but bowed to political pressure ignored it.
That is how over valued tech stocks and companies are. Like Google, Apple, Facebook etc…
That is what Paul Krugman was talking about the widening disconnect between profits and production in our iWhatever economy.
And why it’s making some few people very wealthy and it’s really burying the U.S. and Europe.

Broke banking system of FDIC insurance and the fractional-reserve banking.
“both lenders and borrowers — enabled and encouraged by financial deregulation — forgot the dangers of leverage”http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

“The documentary is really interesting. But I took from it that the problem is not “individualism” i.e. personal liberties and freedoms nor is the problem free markets i.e. individuals trading value for value to mutual benefit and mutual consent.”

Really? That wasn’t my takeaway. My takeaway was more along the lines that under marketing and mass consumption individual freedom is more an illusion.

I read an interview with Frank Levy (2007) before the market crash in 2008. His take is interesting considering Obama’s middle-out economic argument.

I also thought it interesting how influential the “California ideology” has been on the “left”.

Can you be more explicit re your statement “I also thought it interesting how influential the ‘California ideology’ has been on the ‘left’.” Interesting re the documentary content?

Another interesting Adam Curtis documentary is “Century of the Self.” Have you watched that one? The philosophical understanding of the Buddhist self and Hindu Self is somewhat confusing to me. And, I’m interested because as I mentioned (somewhere) Thomas Merton and Erich Fromm thought the Eastern understanding of self and Self where confused with our (Western philosophical) understanding of individual. Meaning, the self and individual aren’t interchangeable concepts in defining a human person but are different concepts in Western/Eastern philosophy (I think). I don’t know if I said that properly, and I’m open to correction.

In any event, I was somewhat driven by trying to understand the whole Eastern philosophical understanding of “person,” “self,” and “Self” but I had to set it aside because of time. However, this reminds me of a physics discussion reading Tian Yu Cao’s “Can We Dissolve Physical Entities into Mathematical Structures”–SR. Around that time I read an article by Dan Arnold titled “Reaching Bedrock: Buddhism and Cognitive-Science,” which I mention because of your remark about California ideology and the left, which Arnold mentions.

Anyway, going through printouts from Dec/Jan I found “The Decontextaulization of Asian Religious Practices in the Context of Globalization” by Brooke Schedneck. Anyway, another reason I ask if you could be more explicit re your comment.

After reading both articles you posted I’m curious if you are familiar with James C. Scott’s “Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts”?

“When it comes to understanding why the Western working class has
apparently made an accommodation with capitalism and unequal property relations despite its political rights to mobilize, one finds, again, both thick and thin accounts of ideological hegemony. The thick version emphasizes the operation of what have been called “ideological state apparatuses,” such as schools, the church, the media, and even the institutions of parliamentary democracy, which, it is claimed, exercise a near monopoly over the symbolic means of production just as factory owners might monopolize the material means of production. Their ideological work secures the active consent of subordinate groups to the social arrangements that reproduce their subordination. 8 Put very briefly, this thick version faces two daunting criticisms”(Scott 73).

“Broke banking system of FDIC insurance and the fractional-reserve banking.
“both lenders and borrowers — enabled and encouraged by financial deregulation — forgot the dangers of leverage”http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/”

qapla – I’m a little thrown off and have logged in and out a few times. But, let me ask you, did you mean to cite Krugman’s blog “Milton’s Paradise, Still Lost” critiquing Robert Skidelsky and QE? I didn’t catch this last night.

The Buddhist understanding of self is non-dualistic.
Anatman=no-self . Buddhism teaches that all empirical life is impermanent and in a constant state of flux, and that any entity that exists does so only in dependence on the conditions of its arising, which are non-eternal. Therefore, any Self-concept,any sense one might have of an abiding Self or a soul is regarded as a misapprehension; since the conceptualization of the Self or soul is just that.
Buddhism holds that the notion of an abiding self is one of the main causes of human conflict, and that by ceasing to reify our perceived selves, we can come to a state of perfect peace/wellbing.

In Hinduism the Self or atman or soul is much like the Christian idea of a soul, but the Hindu idea is that this atman is not really separate from Brahma or God. So it’s really quite dualistic even though the Advaita call themselves “non=dualistic”.

I meant by the “California ideology” influential on the left in many ways. In it’s link to libertarian socialism that is influential on the left and it can be seen in groups like “anonymous” and even in the The Venus Project and so many other things and ways the left has taken up Rand and the California ideology’s ideas about technology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project

“Really? That wasn’t my takeaway. My takeaway was more along the lines that under marketing and mass consumption individual freedom is more an illusion.”

The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed (U.S. release: Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture) is a non-fiction book written by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in 2004.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell

I saved the pdf of the Domination of the Arts of Resistance. It will take some time to get to it and through it. But it seems interesting.

Please don’t get me wrong I share many of your concerns and the authors mentioned above concerns and criticism of the system at present. And much can be done to change the system from within.
Like Frank Levy on why wages haven’t gone up even though production has. This might be due to globalization of the labor market. You can always find some one to work for less.
And in a way what a person gets paid is in large part how easy it is to replace the person.
Even the some of the Japanese cars and parts are being made in Thailand, cheaper labor.

I’m going to cheat and copy and paste part of a comment from the Heraclitus comment section:
I thought it was just genius and brilliant to tie Heraclitus’s idea of conflict or strife as a creative process and emergence with Madison and democracy and Adam Smith’s invisible hand, capitalism/free markets.

“That move is so beautiful and so right on.

There have been many critiques of democracy and one of the reasons is that it is conflict. With each party or faction and factions within a party all voting, campaigning, and legislating for their self interests or interests that they have an attachment to.

And that it is because capitalism is conflict/strife that many people dislike capitalism/free markets.

Each individual or group is acting in a self interested way and inevitably there will be conflicts of interests and competition. ( Some individuals are selfless/altruistic in that they are taking care of children or caring for a sick, elderly, etc. loved one or friend or give to charities to help others)

But liberty or liberalism = equality before the law and equal opportunity for all men and women regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. does not produce nor guarantee equal out comes for all.

Unequal out comes from unequal production/work. A kind of Randian selfishness.
(I’m not talking about when people gain money by fraud, theft, etc.)

Ideas like communism/socialism and totalitarian regimes seek to guarantee equal out comes and remove distinctions between people, usually by use of force.

Equal out comes from unequal production/work. A kind of reverse Randian selfishness which is perhaps more selfish in a way.”

It is good to critique and protest and point out the problems in the world and in the system(s) but how do we effect change?

I don’t have the answers. I’m still going over all of this in my head and Frithjof Bergmann on the Post-Work Culture for Not School.

Some of this I think is new and due to a changing world we find ourselves in and some of it is rather old.

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – Epicurus on Happiness

at about 09:38 on

on Buddhism you might like my comment at Rationally Speaking podcast as “qapla” for a sumary of Buddhism
RS70 – Graham Priest on Buddhism and Other Asian Philosophieshttp://www.rationallyspeaking.org/

I think our fascination and fetish of technology and computers and smartphones etc., all of which is way over valued, is not the liberating thing the Californian ideology thought. And it seems to be the driver of the break in profits from production.
But I think the future could be like Star Trek and doesn’t have to be like Terminator.
It’s up to us.

Well, the Krugman blog I read really ties into Bergmann’s “New Work” (even if it wasn’t the intended original blog to be read) and will again post “In Praise of Leisure” by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky. The Skidelsky’s are arguing–like Bergmann–that our concept of work, leisure, etc. just needs to be redefined or reconfigured because of the third wave of industrialization–technology.

Anyway, it does seem to me that the two contrasting views utilizing technology can be, metaphorically speaking, a type of human wrap drive (picking-up on Star Track) in contrast to a slowing down because of limited natural resources, where I kind of think of the Terminator like how we humans will utilize technology. The good news is, based on the last of the Terminator sequel I watched, emphasized behind the machines was a human heart. So, to an extent, I think of the plot like giving back human beings the capability to determine the outcome (how we use technology).

Anyway, thinking about Star Track and wrap drive, Dan Pink’s afterward (A Whole New Mind) asks 1) Can someone over seas do it cheaper. 2) Can a computer do it faster. 3) Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age? I don’t know what Bergmann would think about Pink’s argument. Nor if human emotions are being emphasized for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people… . Simply, the ethical principles of utilitarianism with the power of quantitative reasoning/statistics in the 21st century.

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